User:Barbara Osterrieth

Jef Verheyen was a Belgian painter (Itegem, 6th of July 1932 - Apt, 2nd of March 1984). Born with an ophtalmological handicap, he painted light to brighten his life and to escape from daily darkness. He would later say: "Je peins pour voir" (I paint in order to see).

Life and work
He was born on the 6th of July 1932, in Itegem, Belgium. His father was a house-painter, and his mother worked in an art supplies store. He was very young when he had his first contact with paint.

From 1946 to 1954, Jef Verheyen studied drawing, model- drawing, etching, printing, and glass- painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and at the Institut National Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp. While attending a course at the sculptor Olivier Strebelle's ceramics studio, he met his future wife, Dani Francq. After completion of his studies, he decided to travel through France, Italy and Spain, in order to acquire the experience of working abroad. He arrived in Vallauris (France) in 1953, where he stayed for six months making and restoring ceramics in the company of Raymond Dauphin in a studio also frequented by Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger.

In 1956, he produced his first black monochrome and white monochrome paintings. During an exhibition at the Middelheim Museum (Antwerp), he met the painters Jozef Peeters, Gianni Dova and Lucio Fontana. Afterwards, he travelled to St-Paul de Vence, and on his way home, decided to make a stop in Paris to see Yves Klein’s "installation" -The Void- at Iris Clert’s gallery. The artists started to correspond at the time.

In 1958, he managed to get his manifesto "Essentialism" published in the Swiss publication Art Actuel International. The manifest lifted the veil on his vision of painting; but also described its restrictions, and the confinement of light. 1958 is also the year he co- founded the group ‘G 58’ but he soon decided to take his distance after a disappointment. He came in contact with artists such as Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein who would remain his friends and collaborators over the years to try to convince them to participate to an international group exhibition. This will eventually lead to the 1959 exhibition 'Vision in Motion' at the Hessenhuis, which, in the end, did not include any of them except for Yves Klein. After his unsuccessful "G58" experience, he decided to found his own 'school' with the poet Paul De Vree and the painter Engelbert Van Anderlecht, this would be the beginning of the 'Nieuwe Vlaamse School' ('New Flemish School’).

1960 would see the publication of a new manifesto ‘Pour une peinture non plastique’ (Plea for a Non Pictorial Painting). His cooperation to the 1960 "Monochrome Malerei" exhibition in Leverkusen, would be decisive for his career because that is where he met Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, the founding members of the Zero group. From 1960 on, he collaborated to all the important Zero group exhibitions and played an important role as middleman between the group, its artists and the Belgian art scene. The Zero group was originally created in Düsseldorf (Germany) in 1957 by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, who were soon joined by Gunther Uecker. They were opposed to tachism and Art Informel that had, in their opinion, dominated the local and international art scene for too long. They rejected motion, the importance of the subconscious and the automatically informal and believed it was time to replace these dated concepts by something new. Light would become their focal point, they introduced monochrome paintings, kinetic and light art, and actions. If some of the artists chose to use traditional techniques such as paint on canvas to express themselves, others started to search for new methods and materials in order to broaden their original concept.

In 1962, in collaboration with Lucio Fontana, he created two works (a triptych and 'Rêve de Möbius') at the villa of collector Louis Bogaerts in Knokke. In 1963, there was another collaboration with Fontana and Goepfert, their works were exhibited in Berlin in 1965.

In 1967, he organized together with Günther Uecker, an open air exhibition called 'Vlaamse landschappen' (‘Flemish Landscapes’) in Mullem, Belgium. Two years later, he met the collectors' couple Gerhard and Anna Lenz. This would be the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

Verheyen's monochrome paintings are little tangible. Colour, to which he has reduced the meaning of painting, is dissociated from specific objects or periodicity. Colour is just colour, and nothing else. He invites the spectators to experience colour purely as colour, and not just as an ingredient for painting. John Matheson explains it very well when he says: "Colour becomes self-determinant; colour is nothing but colour. It breaks through the clouds, we can experience it, feel it. It fades, and dissolves; like a rainbow". For Verheyen the Essence reveals itself in the Emptiness, therefore "Nothing" becomes "Everything". In his workshop, the captation of light, of energy leads to contemplation. After his move to the French Provence in 1974, Verheyen felt liberated which improved his pictural reflections on light. It is there that he found his final slogan 'Lux est Lex' ("Light dictates the law"). Verheyen, who was born with a severe ophtalmological handicap, painted light to bring light into his life and to escape from the daily darkness.

On the 2nd of March 1984, right after his return from a trip to Autria, he has a fatal heart attack at his judo club in Apt, France.

Belgium

 * Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
 * Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels
 * Kunstmuseum aan Zee, Provinciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst PMMK, Oostende
 * Museum voor Schone Kunsten Oostende
 * Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, BOZAR, Brussel
 * SMAK, Gent
 * Musée de l'Art wallon/ MAMAC, Luik
 * Musée D’Ixelles, Brussels
 * Vervoordt Foundation, Wijnegem

Germany

 * Museum Schloss Morsbroich, Leverkusen
 * Museum kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
 * Jozef Albers Museum Quadrat, Bottrop
 * Sammlung Universität, Bochum

Switzerland

 * Kunsthaus, Zürich
 * Musée Rath, Geneva
 * Kunstmuseum, Bern
 * Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St.Gallen

Italy

 * Bibliotheca Nazionale, Milano
 * Fondazione Boschi-Di Stefano, Milano
 * Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milano

Poland

 * Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi

Brazil

 * Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro

Literature

 * Anette Kuhn: ZERO. Eine Avantgarde der sechziger Jahre. Propyläen, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1991, ISBN 978-3-549-06694-2
 * Retrospectieve JEF VERHEYEN, texts by J.Verheyen, W.Van den Bussche, G. Vaes, I. Michiels & L.Verheyen e.a., exhibition catalogue PMMK, Stichting Kunstboek, Oostende, 1994, ISBN 90-74377-17-3
 * ZERO und Paris 1960. Und heute, exhibition catalogue Villa Merkel, R.Damsch-Wiehager, Esslingen / Nice, Cantz Verlag,1997/1998.
 * Dieter Schwarz, Antwerpen/Bruxelles’60 Bram Bogart Engelbert Van Anderlecht Jef Verheyen, exhibition catalogue Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf, 2002.
 * LUX EST LEX, exhibition catalogue Axel Vervoordt Kanaal, texts by Jef Verheyen, Jan Hoet, Freddy De Vree, published by Axel Vervoordt, Wijnegem, Belgium, 2004, ISBN 90-8085-321-6
 * ZERO, Internationale Künstler Avantgarde, exhibition catalogue Museum Kunst Palast and Cantz, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Valerie Hilling, Catherine Millet & Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 3-9809060-4-3
 * museum kunst palast (Hrsg.): ZERO – Internationale Künstler-Avantgarde der 50er/60er Jahre. With participation of Bazon Brock, Tiziana Caianiello, Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Catherine Millet, Lóránd Hegyi, Valerie L. Hillings, Heike van den Valentyn, Atsuo Yamamoto, Mattijs Visser. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 978-3-7757-1747-2
 * Artempo, Where Time Becomes Art, exhibition catalogue published by Musei Civici Veneziani, texts by Jean-Hubert Martin, Heinz Norbert Jocks, Massimo Cacciari, Giandomenico Romanelli en Mattijs Visser, MER Paper Kunsthalle, Gent, 2007, ISBN 978-90-76979-47-2
 * ZERO in NY, exhibition catalogue by Mattijs Visser, published by the ZERO foundation & Sperone Westwater, New York /Düsseldorf /Gent 2008, ISBN 978-90-76979-73-1
 * ACADEMIA, Qui es-tu?, exhibition catalogue, La chapelle de l’Ecole des beaux-arts de Paris, Axel Vervoordt & MER Paper Kunsthalle, Gent, 2008, ISBN 978-90-76979-65-6
 * Anna Lenz: Epoche Zero: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg. Leben in Kunst. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-775-71688-8
 * IN-FINITUM, exhibition catalogue Palazzo Fortuny, published by the Musei Civici di Venezia & Vervoordt Foundation & MER Paper Kunsthalle, Venezia /Gent, 2009, ISBN 978-90-76979-88-5
 * Jef Verheyen Le Peintre Flamant, published at the occasion of the exhibition "Jef Verheyen and Friends", Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany, 11 september 2010 - 16 January 2011, ISBN 978-94-6117-006-4